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User blog:Yterbium/Season 4, Episode 5, “Fortunate Ben”
18–19 January Update The first episode (review) of 2018 is out! I'm almost excited, but not as excited as I would have been had the Internet not been down. This might be the longest interval between the episode release date and its review, unfortunately, but that will hopefully change in the future—as with the speed of my computer. Whilst you were all waiting, though, have you watched the new Inanimate Insanity? One of my favourite parts of that episode was when This is just another step in the progressive direction of object shows since the summer of 2016 when Pen was revealed to be transgender! But seriously, on to the episode. First of all, we start off with the title. Who the hell is Ben?, thought I, but that's not the most shocking part of the ten minutes of my watching the show. Pre-Credits Gag: Match and Ruby play Spongy Cake. Remember that game from eight years ago? I'm pretty sure I mentioned it in an episode before, but that game was most popular (in a meta sort of way) when I discovered BFDI back in 2012. On another note, Match and Ruby have sort of modified the lyrics so that they say, “Who do we think is a stupid, annoying bore?”, but I totally mis-interpreted that was “whore”—without realising that Spongy is the least fuckable character on the show. Oops! Flower grabs Ruby because she totally loves her, but Flower demands love and recognition of beauty, complete with a flashback of a complete short scene. Then, Ruby realises that Flower is not beautiful, but only when she is in certain poses. It makes sense a bit—you wouldn't want to see your crush running with a roller backpack at school, the Vogue is much more popular these days. Ruby shows the poses in which Flower is on the two sides of the beauty spectrum, one of them being “horrid”, which is funny because we're only 87 seconds in and I've mistaken two words for “whore”. Ruby returns to her game with Match, who has realised that her game is verbally abusive and Spongy-bashing, but Ruby returns to find her playing Spongy Cake with Spongy. There could not have been a better person to play with her, to be honest. I did not expect that plot twist! After the theme song, Four calls upon Death PACT to “assemble or you will tremble”. First thing: That is not the first time I have heard those two rhyming words together. In Iolanthe, in which Pen played the Earl Tolloller, Pin the Fairy Queen says “''When next your houses do assemble / You may tremble''”. Talk about a callback to 136 years ago! Second thing: What's with the animation? I didn't notice it the first time I was watching it, but after going on the BFDI Wiki to see the controversy regarding this episode's animation style and re-watching old episodes, I can totally see a difference. At Cake at Stake, Death PACT do assemble on their platform, along with a sleeping Ice Cube. The Cake at Stake intro does appear to be glitched, which I also didn't notice first time watching. Anyways, both of the hosts seem to really hate Pen's four drawing and screech a lot. Wow, these hosts have really reached a new level of sadism. The number of votes this episode is 20,389, which is an improvement... by 0.7%. I predict this number is not going to change soon. And Bubble is dead! Anyways, the contestant with the least votes is Pen, at 1,093. Funny thing is, that would get him to win eliminated in any episode of BFDI with that number. X brings up the fact that he is the first contestant with the lowest votes and a name not starting with “B”. At first, this proves nothing except for the fact that everyone should name their kids a name beginning with B. Then we get to the shocking plot twist. If you didn't guess, Pen's legal name is ��en. With the emoji and all! I told you that letter was going to be used that way back in episode one, remember? But that's not the thing! The thing is, someone has a name that is completely different from the name they already have! And out of all people, it has to be the one who's second-most influential to the show you might be reading after this review! Don't worry though—Ben is still a name used in Judaism (בֵּן) and it means son. It would have been really insensitive that he should have been called Bat (בַּת): the Hebrew word for daughter. The prizes for this episode are fortune cookies, and made by Bracelety. They were said to have been found in the dumpster, and could you blame whoever it was who threw them away? They're all pro-Ice Cube slogans, and I'd be knackered as hell if all I got from Chinese restaurants were slogans supporting cold-hearted politicians. Long story short, Liy is eliminated, sadly. I wanted Pie to go, because at least Liy had some character development! There is some sexual tension, when X wants to be screeched by Four. Who would ask for that... unless you're into that kind of stuff, in which I apologise. Liy makes a giant speech about how she was responsible for thousands of lives being saved because she was a shitty person back then. In anger, Liy switches herself, first in her direction, and then to a brown light. I guess Jnj listened to the pleas of the BFDI-Superfans that Liy was originally a brown light before! As Liy gets eliminated, Foldy does that weird “should I care or not” smile, but that is intercepted that Stapy and she should actually rejoice. I think Foldy x Stapy might as well be my OTP, y'all! Flower distorts herself by making her “idiotic” in her walk and her talk, because she is all insecure about her beautifulness all of a sudden... but why? I guess it's another theory I won't be writing about. Four tells everyone that X is out getting plastic surgery for his legs, so he introduces the team challenge: to keep their paper aeroplanes off the ground. Reality writes the plot just as I'd thought—in school, we had been reading The Kite Runner, and if you haven't read the book, the goal of the game in the book is to not let your kite hit the ground. I didn't really focus on the contest as I was watching because I was really distracted by the animation, but here are the highlights: *They all fly in a pinballish fashion. *Donut is officially not an asshole, as Gelatin uses team-mates still to his own advantage. *Puffball is actually relevant in this episode. *Nickel ships Cloudy (?) and someone else, I think. He is also not aware of other people's sarcasm. *Woody dabs as if it's a spiritual experience. 2018 called, Woodrow, and it is not. At all. *The groundground is really weird. It splits open, even after it's stapled! So yeah, Beep are up for elimination. I don't know why I voted for Roboty, even though everyone else did. I would have changed my vote for Woody, for still dabbing! Post-Credits Gag: X is really embracing this new leg surgery, for he lays on the groundground at the end of the episode and does some weird dance to this song. Impressions: This episode was interesting, to say the least. I would not say I hated it, because I liked the plot and events, but Jnj should do some more character backstory reveals (and I would not write this part just because of the new II, lol!) Random Quote: “You are a disgrace to the entire art community! And the entire world would rejoice if you never touched a piece of paper again ever!” — either X or the folks over at DeviantArt. Firsts: MatchxSpongy, the new animation, revelation of a contestant's true name. Line Analysis Top 5 speaking contestants from BFB 5 # 4''' (261 syllables) # Ruby (182 syllables) # Liy (147 syllables) # Flower (125 syllables) # '''X (104 syllables) Top 10 speaking contestants in BFB, so far # 4''' # Leafy # Liy (2 ↑) # Golf Ball (1 ↓) # Lollipop (1 ↓) # Pen (2 ↑) # Eggy (1 ↓) # Book (1 ↓) # Balloony # '''X (5 ↑, tied with Balloony) X replaces Donut, who is now at 12th place. Ruby sets a record: She increased 34 places. This beats the previous record of 19 places (by Nickel, ep. 2, Bell, ep. 4, and Foldy, ep. 4). * There are no contestants whose ranks have increased since episode 1 any more. * Rank decreasing since episode 1 ** Bomby, Bracelety, Coiny, Dora, Eraser, Fanny, Fries, Pencil, Pin At the time of their eliminations... * Pencil went from #8 to #23. * Leafy stays at #2. * Bracelety went from #29 to #32. * Liy is now at #3. Where will she be afterwards? Find out next episode review! Category:Blog posts